Thursday, February 13, 2014

“And as I've gotten older, I've had
more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance,
compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.”

Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is
not a very imposing man at 5’ 4” but few will deny the towering influence he
has had on global cinema since the early 1970’s. In fact I doubt that there is
anyone in the world over the age of thirty who has not seen or heard of a
Scorsese film. Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino,
Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and most recently The
Wolf of Wall Street, to name just a few of the phenomenal movies and enduring
movie characters he has created over the years.

The biggest movie stars in the
world line up to be cast in one of his movies, new directors would kill to have
made one movie from his long resume, in their entire career, and moviegoers
flock to his latest creation in droves. Apart from the films he has directed,
he has also produced countless classics and served as mentor and inspiration
for a few generations of filmmakers.

Being a movie fanatic myself, he has long
been a hero of mine. No matter the subject matter or the cast, I used to be one
of the faithful who would gladly pay to watch the next Scorsese film with blind
devotion.

This is a man whose
every film I would run out to be the first to see; a man for whom I had a great
deal of respect. A man whose pain I personally felt, each time he was cheated
out of a Best Director Oscar; amazingly he has still won ONLY one Oscar for The
Departed in 2006; but I digress. The point is that in an industry filled with
shallow, self-absorbed and feckless people, this was a man I admired for being
the opposite.

He is someone I believed held values and principles that were
made of sterner stuff in the midst of an often morally bankrupt profession. This
was a man who in my mind had not drunk the Hollywood Kool Aid of
self-importance. Instead of using his fame to preach to us, off the camera, he spoke
purely through his art; staying true to his vision and not succumbing to
chasing the box office numbers and studio-driven bottom-lines.

To be clear, I
am not comparing him to Gandhi or Mandela but within Hollywood he was someone
who stood out from the rest of the big studio sell-out pack, with his humble,
gentle and self-effacing demeanor. Why then you might ask did I take this
drastic step and boycott a genius and someone whom I clearly held in such high
regard?

In September 2009,
Roman Polanski was detained on a U.S. arrest warrant related to a 1977 child
sex charge while trying to enter Switzerland. He was on his way to attend the
Zurich Film Festival, where he was to be honoured. Polanski has been on the run
since 1978.

He was 43 years old when he pled guilty “to a single count of
having unlawful intercourse with a minor acknowledging he had sex with a
13-year-old girl.” It seems there “have been repeated attempts to settle the
case over the years, but the sticking point has always been Polanski's refusal
to return to attend hearings. Prosecutors have consistently argued that it
would be a miscarriage of justice to allow a man to go free who "drugged
and raped a 13-year-old child." (Source: CNNarticle). I would be inclined to agree with the authorities.

Mr. Polanski
not only committed a crime but actually admitted to it. After he was arrested a
section of the Hollywood community led by Harvey Weinstein started a petition to ‘FREE
POLANSKI’ because they claimed "it seems inadmissible to them that an
international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary
filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him" (Source: ONTD article). The petition called on
every“filmmaker we can to help fix this terrible
situation," (Source: CNNarticle). Martin Scorsese was one of the signatories to this petition.

Let’s begin by stating
the obvious; it seems to me that these petitioners are suggesting that due to
Mr. Polanski’s greatness as a filmmaker and based on his tremendous
contribution to the arts, he should somehow be forgiven for raping a 13 year
old girl; or worse that perhaps the laws of the land that apply to the rest of
us mere mortals do not apply to Hollywood greatness. It would be one thing to request
that the authorities arrest him after the function (personally, I don’t believe
a child rapist should be afforded even that courtesy) but to suggest that he not
only not be arrested but that he be allowed to remain a free man, is abhorrent and
an insult to the rights of women and every daughter, sister, wife and mother. Also,
I am aware that the girl he raped famously forgave him in 1997 and requested
that the charges against him be dropped; she did so to find closure and move on
with her life. Irrespective, her forgiving him should change nothing. Mr.
Polanski committed a serious crime and must face the consequences for his
actions. It is for the Judge and jury to weigh the victim’s forgiveness when
Mr. Polanski faces them in a court of law. If we start to determine criminality
and sentencing based purely on a victim’s forgiveness of the perpetrator, we
may as well do away with the criminal justice system.

It honestly does not
matter to me that there were other famous Hollywood personalities like Woody
Allen, Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson and Jonathan Demme who also signed the same
petition. But it troubled me deeply that Mr. Scorsese did. Perhaps, naively so,
but I had never equated him with the rest of this industry and had held him to
a higher standard. His signature and support to free a confessed child rapist felt
like a personal betrayal and I chose to show my indignation by boycotting his
movies from that day.